Melissa is Executive Director of the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue (AP4D), a platform for collaboration between Australia’s international policy communities. She is a prolific commentator with expertise in Australian foreign policy, Australia’s key relationships across Asia and the practice of diplomacy.

From 2019-2020 Melissa was Asialink’s Director of Diplomacy at the University of Melbourne, where she remains an Asia Institute Honorary Fellow. Prior to that she was a visiting fellow at Taiwan’s Institute of Defense and National Security Research – funded by a Ministry of Foreign Affairs Taiwan Fellowship.

For 13 years Melissa served as National Executive Director of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, which under her leadership was recognised for three years running as the top think tank in Southeast Asia/Pacific and one of the top 50 think tanks worldwide. In 2017, she co-authored Think Tank Diplomacy, the first book-length discussion of the role of policy institutes in the international sphere.